Integrated Trajectory Planning and Resource Scheduling for Multiple Target Tracking in Airborne Radar Network

An integrated trajectory planning and resource scheduling (ITPRS) scheme for multiple target tracking (MTT) in an airborne radar network is proposed in this article. The ITPRS scheme seeks to improve overall MTT performance by exploring degrees of freedom in power, beam, and waypoints of several airborne radars. To quantify, forecast, and control tracking accuracy, the predicted conditional Cramér–Rao lower bound is used as a performance measure. The ITPRS is subsequently formulated as a nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem while satisfying total resource budgets, dynamic constraints, and safety constraints. The ITPRS scheme determines and subsequently removes inactive safety constraints before employing the linearized alternating direction method (LADMM) framework to solve the resulting problem, according to its coupling structures of power and beam variables and time-varying characteristics of safety constraints. Specifically, the ITPRS scheme introduces several auxiliary vectors for resource and active safety constraints to recast the original problem as an equality-constraint one, which can be tackled by the LADMM. The LADMM splits the problem into several subproblems that are either convex or have closed-form solutions. Simulation results demonstrate that the ITPRS scheme outperforms standard trajectory planning and resource scheduling schemes in terms of MTT performance.